Hombre by Elmore Leonard

don’t want to get caught looking at the nose or even saying the word. (I hope no one reading this who might have a big nose will take offense. I wasn’t making fun of noses.)
    The trailing horses were still on the grade, but the coach had passed over the crest and stopped. You could only see the top part of it at first. The road leveled into pinyon and a lot of brush, and on the right side, slanting down at the coach, was a steep cutbank about seven or eight feet high.
    “I guess we can get in again,” the girl said.
    I heard her, but I was watching Mendez. He was looking up at the top of the bank.
    We walked around the trailing horses and I looked up there too. My first thought was, what is Russell doing sitting up there? And where did he get the rifle?
    Then I saw Russell, not on the cutbank but beyond the Favors and up by the teams. Near him, at the banked side of the road was another man, holding a revolver. I guess the McLaren girl saw them the same time I did, but she didn’t let out a peep.
    What is there to say, for that matter? You walk up a road out in the middle of nowhere and there are two armed men waiting for you. Even though you know something is wrong, you act as if this happens every day and twice on Sunday. I meanyou don’t get excited or act surprised. You just hold yourself in and maybe they will go away if you don’t admit they are there. You don’t think at the time: I am afraid. You are too busy acting natural.
    The man on the bank came down to the edge and squatted there holding the rifle (it was a Henry) on us until we were up even with the coach. Then he jumped down to the road, almost falling, and as he stood up I recognized him at once.
    It was the one named Lamarr Dean who rode for Mr. Wolgast. And the other one up by Russell, sure enough, was Early. The same two who had been at Delgado’s the first time I ever saw John Russell.
    What if they recognize him, I thought. Not—what’s going on? Or what are they doing here? But—what if they recognize him? I couldn’t help thinking that first because I remembered so well how Russell had broken that whisky glass against Lamarr Dean’s mouth. Lamarr Dean must have remembered it even better. But he hadn’t recognized him. Early hadn’t either, else he wouldn’t have just been standing there holding that long-barreled revolver.
    Mendez, looking down at Lamarr Dean, said, “You better think before you do something.”
    “Step down off there and don’t worry about it,”Lamarr Dean said. Mendez climbed down and Lamarr Dean looked over toward us. He waited; I didn’t know why until Braden came up past us and Lamarr Dean’s eyes followed him. He said, “We like to not made it.”
    “I kept thinking,” Braden said, “they got some catching up to do once they find the way.”
    “When you didn’t come by the main road.” Lamarr Dean said, “we went back to Delgado’s early this morning. I said to him, ‘Are we hearing things or was that a coach passed us last night?’ He said, ‘You must have been hearing things; there was a coach but it wasn’t on the main road.’ ‘Which way did it go?’ I said and that was when he told me you’d taken this other way and I’ll tell you we done some riding.”
    I kept looking at Braden all the time Lamarr Dean was talking. Maybe you aren’t surprised now why Braden took the stage in the first place and was so anxious to be on it when we left Sweetmary. It is easy to think back and say I knew it all the time. But I’ll tell you I couldn’t believe it at first. Braden was not a person you liked, but he was one of us, a passenger like everybody else, and, when he showed himself to be part of this holdup, it must have surprised the others as much as it did me. Though at the time I didn’t look to see their reaction. Too much was going on.
    Early came over, not saying anything, his facedark with beard growth. He was prodding Russell ahead of him.
    Then another man appeared. He looked like a